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Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has said the World Health Organization encourages children as young as four to have same-sex relations.

The famously anti-LGBT+ president is following in the footsteps of US President Donald Trump. The last few weeks have seen Trump withdraw funding from the World Health Organization as the US struggles with coronavirus.

Agence France-Presse reports Bolsonaro made the comments in a Facebook post he has now deleted. He said:

‘This is the World Health Organization whose advice on coronavirus some people want me to follow.

‘Should we follow their education policy guidelines, too?

‘For children zero to four years old: satisfaction and pleasure when touching their bodies, masturbation…. For children four to six years old: a positive gender identity… masturbation in early childhood, same-sex relations…. Nine to 12 years old: first sexual experience.’

One of his advisors, Arthur Weintraub, had earlier Tweeted along the same lines. He said:

‘The WHO has guidelines recommending children zero to four years old be taught about “masturbation,” “pleasure and enjoyment,”’ “touching one’s body” and “gender ideology.” Is that right?’

In fact his claims are not true and appear to be an obvious attempt to undermine the WHO.

They appear to come from a 2010 document which the WHO REgional Office for Europe and Germany’s Federal Centre for Health Education published jointly.

The document, Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe does not encourage any of those behaviors in children. It merely tells adults that children may be curious about their bodies and their sexuality as they grow up.

‘A little flu’

Just like parts of America, Brazil appears to be hard hit by COVID-19. So far it’s had over 100,000 infections and 7,000 deaths with the curve still going up. It seems set to be a hot spot for the virus in Latin America.

And just like Trump, Bolsonaro was initially dismissive of the virus, calling it a ‘little flu’. He even fired his health minister who was taking the pandemic more seriously.